The increasing need for high density capacitive structures such as dynamic random access memory cells has led to the use of high-dielectric-constant materials such as barium strontium titanate and the like, whose high permittivity allows for extremely high capacitive storage capability in a very small area. These high-dielectric-constant materials are usually applied using metal organic chemical vapor deposition techniques, which create significant problems due to the contamination of water and hydrocarbon materials on the surface of the high-dielectric-constant materials and in the bulk of the high-dielectric-constant material. These contaminants can greatly degrade the performance of devices made using the high-dielectric-constant materials. In most cases, processing techniques that are used to deposit and clean dielectric materials do not work well with these high-dielectric-constant materials due to their peculiar susceptibility to contamination from water and hydrocarbons.